Surveillance at sea: The transactional politics of border control in the Aegean.

The relationship between vision and action is a key element of both practices and conceptualizations of border surveillance in Europe. This article engages with what we call the 'operative vision' of surveillance at sea, specifically as performed by the border control apparatus in the Aegean. We analyse the political consequences of this operative vision by elaborating on three examples of fieldwork conducted in the Aegean and on the islands of Chios and Lesbos.